“He’s a good boy”: the actor Ray Winstone called a great talent
Having given the greatest performance of his career in a movie laden with more profane language than virtually any other feature ever made, it was only natural that Ray Winstone would turn the air blue in summing up his feelings on an actor he was left highly impressed with.
The turn in question came in Gary Oldman’s searing drama Nil by Mouth, which featured so many swear words it set a world record. There are 428 utterances of the word “fuck” from beginning to end, and while it was eventually dethroned by an even more foul-mouthed flick, it still boasts one of the highest fucks-per-minute ratios in cinema history.
Obviously, the legacy of Nil by Mouth runs much deeper and remains far greater than its propensity for barbed verbiage, but Winstone has never been shy of a swearword or ten throughout his career either way. That’s the way he talks in real life, and it’s come in very handy on the many occasions he’s been cast as an imposing tough guy who doesn’t mind dropping a barrage of f-bombs to get the point across.
Then again, it’s a touch ironic that the star Winstone couldn’t stop himself from celebrating as “a great fucking talent” is somebody he’s only worked with once, and that came on a family-friendly film that featured a cavalcade of anthropomorphised eccentrics and ended up winning an Academy Award for ‘Best Animated Feature’.
It’s not a genre anyone would expect to be found channelling the spirit of Hunter S. Thompson, but with Johnny Depp involved as the voice of the title character, Rango was never going to be standard animated fare. As well as the titular chameleon emulating the gonzo writer’s wardrobe, the star even made a sneaky secondary cameo appearance as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas‘ Raoul Duke.
Cast firmly to type, Winstone lent his grizzled vocals to a Gila monster named Bad Bill, who serves as an enforcer and heavy to Ned Beatty’s mayor, an elderly tortoise. Rango is a very strange film to put it lightly, and while he wasn’t able to share the screen with Depp in a physical capacity, Winstone enjoyed the experience nonetheless.
“We played it out, I just had a little bit in that one. You know, you do your bit and away you go,” Winstone told The Playlist of his brief stop-off in the booth. “But I loved working with Johnny Depp. He’s a good boy. He’s a great fucking talent. Whatever you watch him in, it doesn’t matter; you just love watching him.”
As a box office success and an Oscar winner, Rango went a whole lot better than Winstone’s last predominantly animated performance, when he was reinvented as a ripped action hero in Robert Zemeckis’ dead-eyed Beowulf. He was surrounded by plenty of top-tier talent on that one, too, but in his estimation, Depp is in a league of his own.
